Removing The Sheen From Buddhism

[Husky]

Post 18/?



Directly related to stuff in post 16, particularly the blockquote at its start.





And now the more important section, or at least, the bit that's more relevant to the original topic.



On this:

For our purpose the mentioning of Avalokiteswara is important. According to the Buddhist tradition this Mount Potikai is the seat of Bodhisattva Avalokiteswara. Taranath7 mentions that Potala is a mythical mountain in the South and is the seat of Avalokiteswara. Hien-Tsiang, the Chinese traveller, also mentions one Mo-lo-kiu-ch'a. Beal and Hultzsch have identified both Taranath's Potala and Hien-Tsiangs's Mo-lo-kiu-ch'a (= Malaiyam) as Potikai.

Even if we - for now - grant that HT's 7th century description had already witnessed the Bauddhification of Dakshinaamorti Shiva at Potiyil by Buddhists declaring him to be Avalokiteshwara instead;

Puttiramitran's 11th century vIracholiyam is the first evidence I have seen of Agastya at Potiyil being Bauddhified, i.e. Agastya being declared a Buddhist.

There is no evidence that this is a "Buddhist tradition" yet, vIracholiyam may merely be the beginnings of Buddhist attempts at launching literary claims to him.



In particular this line: "According to the Buddhist tradition this Mount Potikai is the seat of Bodhisattva Avalokiteswara."



According to WHAT Buddhist tradition is Potalaka = Podigai/Potiyil?

The writer's invented a "Buddhist tradition".



+ Vijayavenugopal writes that 17th century Tibetan Buddhist Taranath admits Potalaka is a mythical place in the "south" :handwaving: (except that admits to nothing more than that according to Avatamsaka Sutra's Gandavyuha sutra, Potalaka is south relative to some other unidentifiable and supernatural places; not to mention that "Jambudvipa" is further south of this Potalaka).

So Taranath's statement becomes irrelevant to identifying the location of any physical alleged Potalaka, let alone identifying it with Potiyil, at least on *his* evidence. We can leave Taranath's input out altogether where Podigai/Potiyil is concerned or even Hsuan-Tsang's statement.



+ The only "evidence" the article cites for the identification of Potalaka with Potiyil is authority: the article admits that it is "Beal and and Hultzsch that have identified both Taranath's Potala and Hien-Tsiangs's Mo-lo-kiu-ch'a (= Malaiyam) as Potikai". (While Lokesh Chandra identified it with Shabarimalai... This is not evidence. Interestingly, Lokesh quoted Beal's translation of Hsuan-Tsang, but made no mention of Beal's identification of Potalaka with Potiyil. Curious unfamiliarity of his, no?)



+ Now, Podigai may well be the place that HT was referring to (but Podigai is clearly not the Potalaka of Taranath; and not the place "Potalaka" of the Avatamsaka Sutra, though the Avatamsaka's Potalaka matches with Taranath's Potalaka description, what little there is: "mythical" and somewhere "south").



+ And Podigai may well be the place where Tamil Buddhists wanted to present the Dakshinamoorti Shiva as "Avalokiteshwara" and try to Bauddhify the Hindu narratives of the Podigai Mountain with (just as they tried to Bauddhify Agastya).



+ But, where in Tamil Buddhist texts - i.e. "Buddhist tradition" - (and not of recent invention) do the Buddhists state that Podigai = Potalaka?



Again:

[Buddhist Puttamittiran in his 11th century Tamil text VirachOliyam] mentions that Agastya learnt Tamil under Avalokiteswara and later spread it to the world. Secondly in the penultimate verse in the chapter, viz. Kiriya-pata-p-patalam, he states: 'the true Tamil of Avalokiteswara whose fame shines in several thousand ways.

To note is that it is Vijayavenugopal who mentions Potigai:

According to the Saivite tradition of Tamilnadu, Siva explains Tamil to Agastya and the hill Potikai/Potiyil is the residence of Agastya.

- Podigai/Potiyil itself is not actually mentioned by Puttamittiran in his verses, and this is worth noting. Because he may merely be trying to Bauddhify what wikipedia mentioned was an account from Mahabharata:



en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pothigai (page as at a few days back)

According to the Mahabharata, Lord Shiva sent the two saints (or sages) Vyasa and Agastya, down to Earth, to create the divine languages, Sanskrit and Tamil. Agathiyar came to Pothigai and established the Tamil culture."

Conceivably, Potigai MAY BE implicitly referred to by Puttamittiran here, since it is the specific place as per established Hindoo accounts where Agastyar learnt Tamil from (Shiva and) Murugan, so Buddhism would very likely want to encroach on the physical setting of the Hindoo religio-history, besides the history itself.



- Important to note, however, is that there is no mention - implicit or explicit - of any local Buddhist tradition identifying Podigai with Potalaka-anything by name. (Else there would be no need to refer to Beal and Hultzsch or Shu interpreting Potiyil as Potalaka.) As there's not even a reference to Podigai in Puttamittiran, there's certainly no allusion to Podigai being The seat of Avalokiteshwara, "Potalaka".



First I have to explain what I'm getting at overall: the answer to Why "Da seat of Avalokiteshwara" is important.

- Well, Buddhist/western historians want to find *where* Avalokiteshwara first developed.

- They assume that because a place called "Potalaka" was namedropped into the Avatamsaka Sutra (Gandavyuha estimated at 1st-3rd century CE), that this means that there may have once been a physical Potalaka (which got mythical by the time of the Avatamsaka) and that the Avalokiteshwara notion may have first been developed in that place. (Some devout [western] converts to Buddhism further believe he may even originally have been a Buddhist sage and then developed into a mythical figure; i.e. they want a historical Avalokiteshwara, besides a physical Potalaka).





BUT:



1. Buddhism's genesis of Avalokiteshwara [note: not of Potalaka, but just Avalokiteshwara alone] has also been argued by other equally-'scholarly' to lie elsewhere still, e.g. near Dhanyakataka/Dharanikota, AP - which, 'scholars' write, experienced a period of Buddhist presence. Of course, back when Buddhists first conceived of Avalokiteshwara, Potalaka wasn't invented yet, because, although Avatamsaka's Gandavyuha Sutra was an early Mahayana text and an early text mentioning Avalokiteshwara (whose character Buddhists had not completely developed yet back then), there were even older Mahayana texts similarly name-dropping the then newly-minted "Avalokiteshwara" character and which had no mention of Potalaka (because it was not invented yet).



2. Assuming that 7th century Hsuan-Tsang was referring to Podigai and assuming he really was transmitting a local "Buddhist tradition" that the deity at Potigai was viewed as Avalokiteshwara by Buddhists (the way we have evidence of 1 local Buddhist in the 11th century presenting Agastya as an adherent of Avalokiteshwara, i.e. as a sudden Buddhist), the problem still remains, that





- 1st century BCE/CE Tamil accounts still only had the chief of Potiyil presenting a gift to Dakshinaamoorti Shiva;

- and 2nd-5th century Silappadikaaram still only mentioned Potiyil Muni Agastya in association with the Vedic-onlee Shiva i.e. as "Shiva who gave out the Vedas".

- in the 7th century Agastya at Podigai was still a pAshupata yogin (as per Hsuan-Tsang's hearsay, again if one assumes he was referring to Podigai); though some indications of Buddhist attempts at associating Agastya with Avalokiteshwara were present in HT's account: that Avalokiteshwara was the one manifesting as the "Pashupata Yogin" ("Ishwara/Maheshwara").

- by the 11th century - and only in the vIracholiyam, apparently - there is actual evidence of a Buddhist claim that Agastya (who'd learnt Tamil from Shiva) had by now been morphed into a Buddhist by Buddhism (and so was no longer a "pAshupata yogin" to Buddhists anymore, though this last had been the description repeated by Hsuan-Tsang in the 7th century).

Beal and Hultzsch have identified both Taranath's Potala and Hien-Tsiangs's Mo-lo-kiu-ch'a (= Malaiyam) as Potikai and Hultzsch states that Hieun-Tsiang or his Buddhist informants seem to have transformed Agastya, who is supposed to reside on Podigai, into the Bodhisattva Avalokiteswara.8 But, as pointed out above, according to Puttamittiran, Agastya is the disciple of Avalokiteswara. Thus it is clear that the Buddhist tradition of Tamilnadu has identified Potikai, the seat of Agastya, as also the seat of Avalokiteswara and made Agastya his disciple.

Everyone seems off. Including especially Vijayavenugopal's convenient denial of Hultzsch, when Hultzsch was simply sticking to what Hsuan-Tsang had said and not trying to retrofit stuff onto HT.

I think that what we're witnessing over the centuries from around HT to around Puttamittiran's claims is the development of a TN Buddhist "tradition" of encroachment on Potigai (especially all the sacred Hindu associations there). Vijayavenugopal is trying to present the final Buddhist version as at Puttamittiran's vIrachOliyam time, as the standing Buddhist "tradition" even in HT's time. But HT would never have referred to a pAshupata Yogin in relation to Avalokiteshwara unless he got that from his "Buddhist informants", even were he wrong about the relationship between the pAshupata Yogin manifesting and the alleged Avalokiteshwara at the shrine (i.e. even if he had conflated the two).





3. Anyway, to get back to the problem of Da Potalaka.

It all means that the physical location where the Buddhist Avalokiteshwara notion was first developed *cannot* be Podigai/Podiyil.



In 1st-3rd century CE, Avatamsaka Sutra's Gandavyuha already namedrops Potalaka as a place associated with Avalokiteshwara. If there was a physical place that gave rise to the mythical Potalaka of Avalokiteshwara or even the origin of the Avalokiteshwara character itself, then it can't be Podigai because:



- Buddhist encroachment on Podigai (assuming Hsuan-Tsang and Puttamittiran were both thinking of Podigai) started quite late: AFTER Silappadikaaram of the 2nd-5th century CE. Sometime before HT (when the theory was still developing clearly, since Agastya was still a pAshupata).



- The Avalokiteshwara cult is already dated to 1st century BCE-1st century CE, so the Avalokiteshwara notion must precede that. And Afghanistan already had Avalokiteshwara images in the 2nd-3rd century CE (even mentioned below as the "first image of Avalokiteshwara") - all before or while Silappadikaaram still associated Potiyil Agastya with Shiva.



www.chibs.edu.tw/ch_html/chbs/10/chbs1011.htm

The image of Avalokitesvara first appears in the ancient Indian Buddhist iconography of the second to third centuries C.E., in reliefs of the temples and stupa complexes in Gandhara, as a companion of the Buddha. Later, in the fifth or sixth century, it is already found throughout India as an independent figure and object of cult.[2] It is natural, however, to consider that there must have been a certain evolution of the concept before it found its way into religious art. Thus, the beginning of the Avalokitesvara cult may be dated back at least a century or two earlier, that is the period between the first century B.C.E. and the first century C.E. which coincides what is commonly accepted as the time when early Mahayana emerged in India.[3]

The written sources seem to confirm this assumption. In the Lotus Sūtra and the larger Sukhāvatīvyūhasūtra, both supposedly dating back to the first or second　century C.E.,[4]　we meet bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara already in his full glory [...]



[13] The exact date of the Gaṇḍavyūha is still a matter of discussion. Gómez (1967: lxviii-lxxiv), on the basis of the analysis of direct and indirect sources and referring to some archaeological material has set up both a terminus ad quem and a terminus ad quo for the Gaṇḍavyūha that are respectively the second half of the third century C.E. and the “period shortly after the beginning of our era.” Nakamura (1989: 195) says: “The Gaṇḍavyūha is likely to have been composed in the early reign of the Kuṣāṇa dynasty, i.e., 1-100 A.D.”

So

+ the Avalokiteshwara notion (before or at 1st century BCE - 1st century CE) had already been developed before Buddhist incursion on Podigai

+ the Avalokiteshwara cult (1st century BCE-1st century CE = when early Mahayana emerged in India) had already developed before Buddhist incursion on Podigai

+ Pre-Avatamsaka Sutras mentioning Avalokiteshwara - Lotus and SukhAvatIvyuha (1st-2nd century CE) - is before Buddhist incursion on Podigai

+ the earliest mention of "Potalaka" - in the Gandavyuha of Avatamsaka Sutra (1st-3rd century CE) - is before Buddhist incursion on Podigai

+ the earliest known images of Avalokiteshwara (2nd-3rd cent CE) are dated before Buddhist incursion on Podigai

+ by the 7th and 11th centuries there were of course images of Avalokiteshwara in many parts of the subcontinent, but that won't make their loci the original "Potalaka" of either the Avatamsaka or any physical locations that may have originated the mythical notion. [Though in Bauddhified Asia, places have been named Potalaka after the Avatamsaka. And these places house statues referred to as Avalokiteshwara.]

+ Buddhist incursion on Podigai was still developing after 7th century Hsuan-Tsang: it's only in the 11th century we have evidence of Buddhists declaring (in usual backprojection) that Potiyil Muni Agastya was actually a Buddhist and that he'd learnt Tamil from Avalokiteshwara, and more Bauddhifying fictions.



[I predict Tamil dravoodianism will do two things in time: shift dates of important early Tamil texts to make them more amenable to the Buddhist claims AND

dravoodianism having worked so hard to declare that Agastya did not give rise to Tamil etc, now dravoodianism will backpeddle and say he did give rise to Tamil after all, but that he was Buddhist, "because an 11th century Buddhist said so."]